Cascadia Podcast

This week, Cascadia is on the road. We visit the Owyhee County Museum in Murphy, Idaho to sit down with Eriks Garsvo, the director of the museum. We talk about some of the unique items they have on display, as well as the upcoming Outpost Days. Check them out online at

http://owyheemuseum.org/

https://www.facebook.com/OwyheeCountyMuseum/

And visit them in person!

Swiftwater was one of the interesting characters in history. He earned a fortune by mining in the Klondike, blew it all, and ended up murdered in Peru. All the way, he married several women, including two sisters and courted a third. It seems women would forever be his undoing.

As a young woman, Klondike Kate traveled to the Gold Rush where she was able to build a fortune as a dancer, entertaining miners in Dawson, Alaska. She led a wild life for a while, but finally settled down in the state of Oregon where she built a boarding house and lived out her final years being called "Aunt Kate" by her neighbors.

Marcus and Narcissa Whitman were a missionary couple that set out west to start a mission among the Cayuse Indians. They helped blaze the Oregon Trail, but their end was tragic.

The Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus is a unique and rare creature that resides only in Cascadia. It resides in the coniferous forests found in the Olympic National Forest. It's a strange amphibian, residing on both land and sea. When on land it lives high in the trees so that few humans have actually seen one in the wild. We recently learned that the octopus could be extinct soon.  Decades of encroachment by humans have limited the range of the octopus and is endangering them. Coupled with the ever increasing population of the octopus' two natural predators, eagles and Sasquatch, these creatures could be gone within the next decade or so. If you are still reading this, happy april fool's day. Listen to this episode for a good laugh at some of our outtakes from the past year.

Joseph Lane was a Mexican-American War veteran, the first Oregon Territorial Governor, Oregon State Senator, and ran as vice-president in the 1860 Presidential Election. He was also an ardent seccesionist and one of the leaders of the Knights fo the Golden Circle in the Pacific Northwest.

This week we take a look at an article called "Thwarting Southern Schemes and British Bluster in the Pacific Northwest" by James Robbins Jewell. The author contends the Pig War, which we covered in our fourth episode, was meant to divert troops out west during the build-up to the Civil War. Further, he discusses British plots for taking over a large chunk of the Pacific Northwest, as well as how the Brits were encouraging pro-Southern sympathies among the Southerners living in B.C. and Vancouver. And of course, we can't do a Civil War episode without speculating on how our old friend Jeff Standifer was connected to all of this. 

Special thanks to Angie Davis at the Idaho State Archives.

Native legends along the coast of the Pacific Northwest tell of a great battle between Thunderbird and Whale, shaking the earth and causing great flooding. But this story is more than legend being based on an actual verifiable event, the Great Cascadia Earthquake of 1700 and the Orphan Tsunami it caused.

From 1855 to 1856, the indigenous peoples of the Rouge River in Southwestern Oregon were at war with the United States Government and the settlers who were coming into the area. This war included a very harsh defeat for the US Army at the Battle of Hungry Hill and the first Indian reservation in the Pacific Northwest.

In December 1982, a man walked into a Catholic Church in Boise, Idaho. While waiting to confess his sins, he took cyanide pills and died on the floor of the church. He left behind only $1,900 and a fake name. To this day, police have been unable to identify the man and his motive for killing himself in that church. This man may also be the best suspect in the murders of several Catholic priests in the American Southwest. 

Check out our guest Elena's show at

www.facebook.com/stateofcrimepodcast

www.instagram.com/stateofcrime/

https://twitter.com/StateofCrimePod